


California English

by sapphicstanzas



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Chubby Yuuri, College AU, Found Family, Happy Halloween!, M/M, Viktor's perspective, and Phichit, becuase y'all can pry that trait from my cold dead hands, domestic living in a shitty apartment, ghost au, mostly soft pining in three parts, nothing too tragic, phichit chulanont voice: a family can be two gay college students and a dead russian
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-11-24
Packaged: 2019-01-26 10:01:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12554964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphicstanzas/pseuds/sapphicstanzas
Summary: Perhaps this is why ghosts haunt the living. To touch them is sublime.a college AU in three parts featuring a ghost, some linguistics, and a pair of perpetually cold hands





	1. I

At first Viktor thinks they are a couple, and he is gloriously disappointed.

The landlord directs them throughout the apartment with a dismissive air, and it’s quite difficult to decide if he wants them to actually put their names down on a lease or if he’s trying to scare them off with sheer frigidity. Whatever his intentions, the two clearly aren't deterred.

“Kitchen looks nice,” the shorter one says enthusiastically, and Viktor laughs before he can discern if it's sarcasm or not. The kitchen is a nightmare. The entire apartment is a nightmare, in all honesty.

The landlord drawls, “It's only one bedroom,” and his eyes wander between them like a suggestion. The one with the glasses shrugs. A light flush spreads across his cheeks, and Viktor likes it.

He’s cute. A bit young maybe, and woefully alive, but cute.

Glasses says shyly, “We can make do with anything as long as it's cheap,” and his boyfriend rolls his eyes.

“Now you make us sound _easy_ ,” he laments, and Glasses looks embarrassed. He worries the inside of his cheek as Boyfriend elbows him playfully between the ribs. Viktor perches on the cracked linoleum kitchen counter and observes.

“How much is rent? Monthly?” Glasses is practical, even if the question comes out endearingly meek.

The landlord says, “Eight hundred. Monthly.” Boyfriend looks aghast.

“What the hell?”

“That's a good price,” Glasses tells him with some measure of warning. “The best we’ll get close to campus.”

College students. Of course. Newlyweds wouldn't dare move into a place like this. The apartment complex has a damning air of _never escaping_ to it--though perhaps that's just Viktor’s presence.

“Yeah, it's a _ridiculously_ good price, which is why I’m worried. In LA?” Boyfriend looks to his companion with wide eyes. “Someone died here.” Up on the counter, Viktor leans against the cabinets.

“Phichit, shut up.” But Glasses catches himself in the act of looking around and reddens. “Don't be obnoxious.”

“Or it's a drug front,” Boyfriend/Phichit concludes, and Viktor snorts. It's definitely a drug front, but so is every shitty apartment complex in Los Angeles. This one in particular is no more special than the last.

“Are you interested or not?” the landlord snaps, and Glasses hardly considers before he nods once.

“We’re interested.”

* * *

 

They have friends to help them move in. This is how Viktor discovers than Boyfriend/Phichit is actually not a boyfriend after all, and that Glasses’ name is Yuuri. The name, deceptively close to Russian, is familiar on Viktor’s tongue.

“This is a shithole,” the undergrad-aged kid carrying a giant box of books announces, and he promptly trips over the doorstop. Certainly not Viktor’s doing. “Hope you don’t get murdered.”

“I know for a fact you’ve lived worse places,” Yuuri chides gently, and the kid shrugs.

“Two steps up from a homeless shelter is still a shithole,” he says unapologetically, and the second stranger chokes on a laugh. The first kid looks to him with raised eyebrows.

“Sorry,” the other one says. “That was mean.” He’s small and pale beside his companion’s height and deep complexion, but they are both incredibly young. Viktor wonders if Glasses and his boyfriend-who-is-not-his-boyfriend make a habit of picking up strays. The concept is endearing.

“You’d be better off in the dorms,” the tall one continues, and Yuuri sighs.

“We can’t afford it, Leo. This is the best we can do.”

Leo sniffs disdainfully. The book box is stuffed past capacity and thus open, stacked on top of a precarious pile of other bins, and Viktor leans against it and surveys them casually. Finds himself partially corporeal, and flicks through a few pages of a what appears to be an open photography portfolio. “Still. Shit feels haunted.”

On cue, the book box slides off the top of the stack and bursts at the seams in a flutter of white pages. Viktor leaps back, and Leo swears and steps back into him. Flinches at the cold and jumps forward again.

“What the _fuck--”_

“Whoops,” Viktor says, and no one hears him. The youngest kid, the one without a name, laughs.

“That's what you get for stacking them like that,” he says, kneeling to scoop a few texts carelessly back into the box. Yuuri pinches the bridge of his nose and waves him off.

“I’ve got it, Guang Hong, I’ve got it, you'll just make more of a mess--” He drops to the floor and begins to arrange the books in stacks. Art portfolios seem to be a common theme. Some stuff on horticulture too, and some books in other alphabets of whose contents Viktor couldn't even begin to guess. They appear to be fiction novels. Briefly Viktor considers helping, then decides against it. Retires to a safe, living-person-less corner of the room.

“Were you _scared_ , Leo?” Guang Hong teases. “Afraid of all the _ghosts_ to be found in a nineteen-seventies apartment complex?”

 _“No,”_ Leo snaps too quickly, but then he laughs awkwardly. “God. Don’t expect me to visit very often, Katsuki. Your place gives me the creeps.”

“It's all the lead paint,” Phichit supplies from the doorway. He bears another large box, and looks disapprovingly at the lack of helping hands. “And possibly the asbestos. This place’ll kill us before next semester.”

 _“You_ wanted to live here too,” Yuuri points out with exasperation. It appears that he’s alone in remembering this fact. Phichit grins.

“Don’t get all upset, Yuuri,” he laughs. “I'm only joking.”

“Well, you can joke all you want getting boxes out of the car,” Yuuri says, and he smiles too. Phichit makes a face.

“Says the one sitting on the ground making a damn mess,” he counters, and Yuuri tried to protest, and Viktor decides they are already too married to ever be lovers. He thinks this is good for Viktor, though he can't fathom why. Katsuki Yuuri is still very alive, and at the moment still very oblivious to the existence of his second flat mate. There is nothing to be had here, at least not for Viktor.

He still thinks the glasses are cute.

* * *

 

He discovers that Phichit Chulanont is a film and communications student, an undergraduate senior, and that Katsuki Yuuri is in his third year of graduate school. Both attend UCLA. Both survive on a disgustingly adherent diet of takeout and peanut butter sandwiches. Phichit Chulanont does not sleep, and Katsuki Yuuri sleeps a lot, but rarely in a bed. Nowadays Viktor is rather put out to discover his favorite old nooks more often than not occupied by an international conservation student nodding off into a book. The flat feels crowded, even more so than it had been when he was alive.

On occasion Viktor speaks to them, but they do not notice. He had hoped consistent proximity would help them be more aware of whatever supernatural thing it was that made him _here_ and not _there_ , that perhaps they would soon be able to see or hear him, but the unrelenting passage of time with no results is discouraging. Still, he tries.

Three in the morning, when Phichit sits at the kitchen table with the uneven legs, typing an essay on his laptop and occasionally spooning cinnamon applesauce from a large jar: “You should really go to sleep.”

Phichit Chulanont hums lightly and taps out another sentence on his keyboard. He does not respond, nor does he react when Viktor sits in the chair across from him and watches his face in the glow of the laptop screen for the remainder of the night.

Eight a.m. on a Sunday, upon finding Katsuki Yuuri struggling with the single-cup coffee maker with the type of listlessness that suggests a glorious hangover: “That will just make the headache worse.”

Katsuki Yuuri mutters something in Japanese, and it is surprisingly musical for a word that is undoubtedly very impolite. Viktor watches him agonize over the machine for a few more moments, and then Viktor presses the button clearly marked _BREW_ on the front. Corporeality favors him today, and the coffee maker sputters to life. Yuuri sighs in relief, and Viktor sits up on the counter and surveys his morning routine with the placidity of one who has all of eternity to do so.

Late in October, when the pair invite strays Leo and Guang Hong over for dinner and the apartment is alive with the type of family Viktor never had: “I wish one of you could see me.”

Leo looked up from his phone when he says it, blinks in confusion. “Did you say something?” he murmurs to the Chinese kid, who has his legs tangled in Leo’s lap and looks well on his way to falling asleep. Viktor assumes they are staying the night, and can't decide if he appreciates the extra company or finds it stifling. Perhaps this is how the hauntings of horror movies come about. He misses his personal space.

Guang Hong makes a contented sound and flips onto his stomach, burying his face into the sofa cushion. His reply is a sleepy, muffled, “Didn't say anything.” Leo frowns, drapes an arm over the kid’s legs.

“Okay.”

Viktor says, “I said something,” but Leo’s attention has returned to his phone screen by now and there is no interest left for the unnatural and unexplained.

They do stay the night, a tangle of arms and legs crashed on the tiny sofa, and Viktor wonders where their families are. If Phichit Chulanont and Katsuki Yuuri and this shitty apartment on the fringes of campus is all they have in terms of a family. It's not the worst thing.

Final exams looming, Christmas approaching, Viktor finding Katsuki Yuuri nearly asleep in an upright position, surrounded by several books with hefty titles like _Methods and Models for Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation_ and _Biodiversity and Adaptive Physiology in Marine Ecosystems_ and something called _Limnology_ which looks like an absolute drag: “It’s one in the morning and you're not accomplishing anything like this. Go to bed.”

Predictably, Katsuki Yuuri continues to study. Unpredictable, however, is the way his eyes drift up to met him. “What?” he murmurs, and if Viktor had a heartbeat it would be in overdrive and finally, _finally_ , but then Yuuri frowns and shakes his head and turns back to his assigned reading.

Viktor decides that this won't do. He is ecstatic to had been noticed after so long, and he is not giving up this attention so easily now, and besides, limnology really just sounds like a horrible thing anyway.

Willing himself momentarily solid enough to touch physical objects, Viktor leans over and closes the book. “Get some sleep.”

“Phichit…” Yuuri complains tiredly, but of course Phichit is not there when he looks up. Viktor knows for a fact Phichit is watching artsy French films--the type Chris used to make him watch which are filmed entirely in black and white with little dialogue and lots of sex--on his laptop in the other room for some paper he’s writing. He appears to have no intentions of sleeping tonight either.

Viktor leans against the desk and says with forced casualness, “You keep pretty bad study habits, don't you?”

“I study a lot,” Yuuri says, a tad indignant and a bit wondering too. Viktor wonders if he thinks this is a dream. It would explain why he is not freaking out about the stranger in his flat presently.

“That's what I mean,” Viktor says. “You don't do anything else. Too much studying makes you boring, you know.”

This is posturing. Viktor does not find Yuuri boring, could never find him boring. He’s fascinating. He’s the first person with whom Viktor has held a conversation in eight months.

Katsuki Yuuri rubs his temples, closes his eyes for a very long time. “I need to study,” he murmurs.

“You’ve been at it for weeks,” Viktor counters, because he has. “You’ll do great.”

“You don't know that.”

“Okay, but I do know that if you don't get any sleep you’ll fail it anyway. Regardless of how much studying you've done.” He traces the perimeter of the desk until he loses shape and his hands slip through the wood like water. “Take a break. Six hours. That’s all. Or I won't leave you alone until you do.”

Yuuri is watching his movements in quiet amazement. Slowly, he blinks. He touches his bottom lip with his thumb while he considers the ultimatum, an involuntary gesture which Viktor finds completely endearing.

Finally: “How did you do that?” His expression is dreamy. Viktor wonders if his exhausted lack of awareness is what is making this conversation possible, if sleep wears at the border between living and dead enough for them to exchange pleasantries over biology textbooks now. It’s a tidy hypothesis.

Viktor laughs. Spreads his hands, which are quickly losing their color. Something is heavy within him, though there is no real weight to his body like this, and he feels the curious sort of tiredness that is exclusive to the dead. He won't stay visible for much longer, and the thought makes him sad. He likes this gentle boy and his sleepy questions and his soft mouth.

“I’m dead, Katsuki Yuuri,” he says, and then he slips from the living plane for a long, long while.

* * *

 

When Viktor returns, it is Christmas. Not Christmas where he is from, certainly, but it is undeniably Christmas in America. From the window in the old single bedroom that had once been Viktor’s, he can see the streetlamps strung up with fairy lights, the depressing lack of snow in the streets. LA doesn't do Christmas like how Viktor had done Christmas, a long time ago.

When he wanders into the kitchen, Phichit Chulanont is cooking. Katsuki Yuuri sits at the table reading a book--the title of which Viktor can't discern since it is in Japanese--tracing his bottom lip with his thumb again. He looks up when Viktor sits in the chair opposite to him, and the space between his eyebrows creases like he is having trouble with his vision. The blue-framed glasses sit low on his nose, and he pushes them up in gentle irritation.

“Good morning,” Viktor says, though he is not quite sure what time it is, nor the exact day. “It's my birthday soon.”

“The least you could do was _help,”_ Phichit says long-sufferingly from the stove, and Yuuri stops frowning in Viktor’s direction in favor of looking to his friend.

“You told me you didn't want my help. You said there wasn't enough room for me.”

“Don’t use my past ignorance against me,” Phichit bemoans. “I've changed my mind, and I want your help now.”

Yuuri laughs, and he stands. Drifts to the counter, where he takes up the task of slicing vegetables beside Phichit Chulanont. Truthfully there isn't enough room for two people to work in the kitchen here, but Phichit and Yuuri make it work admirably. They fit together nicely, Viktor thinks with a modicum of distress--one tan and lean and one the antithesis of these former traits, both soft-edged in their sweaters and messy dark hair.

“What day is it?” Viktor asks, just for something to do, and Katsuki Yuuri says, “Christmas Eve.”

Viktor blinks. Phichit Chulanont says, “What about Christmas Eve?” Katsuki Yuuri turns halfway to the table and stops. His mouth twists into a frown again.

“I don't know.” Pause. “I don't think I meant to say that.”

Phichit looks at him for a moment, and then bumps his hip into Yuuri’s. “Spooky.”

Spooky indeed.

The strays arrive within the next three hours, and by that time Phichit and Yuuri have made enough food to feed several more guests than they have. Apparently this was intentional, since Viktor soon discovers that Leo and Guang Hong eat enough for several versions of themselves.

It’s not a traditional Christmas meal, but there is nothing traditional about the situation either, so the variety of Thai food on the table and the Spanish carols Leo is playing from his phone (much to Guang Hong’s apparent despair), and even Viktor’s flickery presence all seem to fit nicely together into one lasting impression of _home_.

Making a home out of a place such as this. The feat is impressive.

The kids stay the night again, and Viktor thinks to ask Leo where they live when they are not sleeping on Yuuri’s couch, but the risk of being heard and the question coming out insensitive is too great. And he doesn't want to ruin this with the sudden revelation they've been harboring a dead man in their home for several months now, either.

Christmas morning and Viktor is the first to the table, and he is sitting in Yuuri’s chair when he opens the fridge and pulls out a carton of orange juice.

“You can hear me,” Viktor accuses, and then: “Oh, and merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas,” Yuuri says absently, then he frowns again and he looks at Viktor and he _sees_ him, Viktor knows it. He drops the open carton of juice and it bursts when it hits the floor but Katsuki Yuuri doesn't even appear to notice it soaking into his socks. “Oh my god.”

“You _can,”_ Viktor says, delighted, and he does not immediately register that this revelation is not nearly as pleasing for Katsuki Yuuri as it is for him. “It's been _months,_ you have no idea how long I've waited for _someone--”_

“What the _fuck_ what the _fuck--”_

“I'm Viktor,” he announces. “We’ve met. I live here too.”

“For how _long?”_ Katsuki Yuuri demands. Now Viktor notices the erratic rise and fall to his chest, the terrified pitch to his voice, the distinct difference between Viktor’s elation and his houseguest’s panic. He frowns.

“Four years? Or possibly it’s been six. I can't remember.”

“What the _fuck--”_

“We have met,” Viktor points out. “You knew I was here.”

“I have absolutely no memory of _that--”_

“Limnology,” Viktor says, and when no realization dawns on Katsuki Yuuri’s face he clarifies, “Your conservation final.”

“I…” Yuuri slumps against the counter. His expression is lost. “I don't…” Viktor wonders vaguely if he’s just ruined Christmas.

Apologetically, he says, “I didn't mean to upset you.” Then he says, with an air of self-suffering, “I'd leave if I could.”

Katsuki Yuuri finally notices the orange juice in his socks and looks further distraught. He grabs a stack of folded kitchen towels from a drawer and casts them over the spill. He is preoccupied by Viktor’s presence. “Are you...are you haunting us?”

Viktor considers it. “Not _you_ specifically, no. The apartment, yes. I guess. I’m not really sure how it works yet.”

“How long have you…” Yuuri gestures vaguely, then blushes.

“Nine months. I'm pretty sure.” He thinks. “Maybe longer. Don't really know.”

“Are you sure about anything?”

“I’m almost certain I’m dead,” Viktor says wryly, but then he drops the smile and shakes his head. “Things get...fuzzy on this end. You and Phichit are really the only way I’ve been able to keep reasonable time.”

“Me and Phichit,” Katsuki Yuuri murmurs. “You said we’ve...talked...before?”

“I can understand you not remembering. You were pretty out of it.” It's a distinctly American turn of phrase. Viktor feels like a college student again. He likes the _aliveness_ that comes with the feeling.

Katsuki Yuuri says, “I feel like I should remember it.”

“Sorry.” Viktor shrugs. “It wasn't a very interesting conversation.” It was--it was--it was to Viktor. But he's not going to bare his lonely heart so easily to a man who’s just discovered for the second time that he exists.

“I’m really sorry.” Yuuri is stepping backwards until he stumbles into the kitchen counter, shaking his head. He looks mildly sick. “This is a lot to take in and--and I’m not sure I'm not hallucinating--I’m just going to…” He grips the counter and his knuckles go white with the force of it. He closes his eyes and talks to himself in a low voice in a language Viktor cannot speak, and Viktor watches him in fascination. He feels the groundedness slip out of his body that is not a body, knows he is fading from reality and when Yuuri opens his eyes it will be like their conversation had never happened.

Viktor doesn't want that. He wants proof for himself that he exists in the real world, that this pretty nervous boy and Viktor’s inability to touch him is not just some god’s joke of a simulated afterlife. A modern Tantalus for the twenty-first century. Viktor is starving, and he wants to _stay_.

But he can't help it, the disappearing. He doesn't own this form anymore.

He clutches at pieces of the mortal world, the edge of the table, the chair, Katsuki Yuuri’s presence. He knows the room is going cold with the effort because Katsuki shivers and the bare light bulbs overhead flicker, but Viktor can't help that either.

Right before he disappears, Viktor says, “It's my birthday today. I’d be twenty-eight,” and Yuuri says, “Happy birthday.”

The other words, the _I’m sorry you're dead_ , remain unspoken, and Viktor is glad. He doesn't want those to be the last sentiments between them before he leaves.

* * *

 

“It’s January ninth,” Yuuri says when he finds Viktor sitting on his bed the next time he appears. “One o’clock in the afternoon.”

Viktor dips his head in acknowledgment. “Thank you.” Silence draws between them. Yuuri blinks like he is trying to look at him but cannot quite sharpen Viktor’s edges.

“Does Phichit know? About you?”

“I haven't been able to tell him. He doesn't see me.”

Yuuri considers this. “Why can I see you?”

“I don't think it's because you're particularly special,” Viktor says, and he wonders why Yuuri frowns. “I think it's just because I’ve spent more time around you than Phichit.” _Because you're prettier,_ he does not say. _Because I’m haunting you._

“Me?”

“Yes. Do you always wear glasses?”

His forehead wrinkles in confusion. “Yes. I need them to see.”

“Oh. They’re--they're nice.” Yuuri blushes.

He says, “You don't look dead.”

Viktor beams. “Thanks. Neither do you.” And the flush to Yuuri’s cheeks deepens in his embarrassment.

He says, “Oh, I didn't mean to--” He scrambles for an explanation, finds none. “I’m sorry if that was insensitive.”

Viktor shrugs. “I don't mind,” he says breezily. “Where’s Phichit?”

“He has class on Fridays now. Second semester.”

“You don't?”

“Technical, no. I’m working on my grad thesis.”

“Sounds awful.”

“It's not bad.” Katsuki Yuuri’s voice is tentatively conversational, but he doesn't look at Viktor. His eyes wander chronically to the window.

Viktor wonders if it would be rude to ask him to look at him.

“Did you--did you go to school around here?”

“When I was alive?” Viktor doesn't know why it pleases him to see Katsuki squirm at the thought of him being dead. It’s mean of him. Perhaps just this, the acknowledgement that he _is_ dead, and yet he is here, having a conversation on another person’s bed, is comforting. “Yeah. I went to UCLA too. And studied linguistics.”

“Linguistics?”

“Sociolinguistics with a focus on bilingualism, specifically.”

“That sounds...terrible too. Objectively.”

Viktor laughs. “Glad to know I have your support in my life’s work.” He considers. “Would have, if it had been my life's work.”

“I'm sorry,” Katsuki says, and Viktor looks at him. Gauges the discomfort on his face as a warning to stop talking about his deadness for the time being.

Viktor smiles brightly. “I'm being self-pitying, aren't I?”

“It’s not my place to say--”

“I am.” Viktor waves a dismissive hand. “I’ll stop.”

“It’s fine.” Katsuki still isn't looking at him. “If you want to talk about it--”

“Not really.” He can't remember enough of it to talk about it. He thinks it might be a blessing.

Shuddery sigh. Relief. Viktor is beginning to suspect that Katsuki really isn’t any good at this empathy thing either. “Okay. Good. Okay.”

Viktor snorts. Yuuri looks to him with an air of distress.

“I--” More apologies on the way, and so Viktor interrupts:

“Do you like LA?”

Yuuri weighs his answer. His hands move unconsciously while he does so, venturing to his throat and fluttering to his stomach like he is displeased with the attention and wishes to detract focus from his face. Viktor wonders why he would ever want to do that--it's a nice face.

“Yeah, I guess I like LA,” he settles. “It's not home, though.”

“Then where’s home?”

“Ten thousand miles away.” Yuuri tips his head back to survey the ceiling quietly, and Viktor admires the gentle slope of his throat. “Japan, in a town a lot smaller than this.”

“Is it pretty?”

“Very pretty.” His voice has the drowsy affectation it had during their first conversation, and the look on his face is lovely in its reminiscence. But too soon, Yuuri appears to remember himself, straightens his spine and clears his throat. “And you?”

Viktor is much too distracted by the revelation that he is infatuated with a living person to recollect the conversation’s subject. “Sorry?”

“Home. For you. Before this place, I mean.”

Viktor smiles. This, he remembers. “Saint Petersburg.”

“And you liked it?”

“I loved it.”

“Then why did you come here?”

On the bed, Viktor shrugs. “Why did you?”

Katsuki Yuuri drops into silence. Quietly, quietly, he takes a tentative step to the bed, then another and another until he is close enough to sit on the edge of the mattress. He does so. “I wanted more, I guess. Than Hasetsu could offer me.”

“Sounds pretentious.”

“Says the sociolinguistics with a focus on bilingualism major,” Yuuri replies, surprisingly boldly, and Viktor laughs.

“It was a good major. Impressed a lot of guys at parties.”

“Oh, I’m sure it was your major that did that.” His breath hitches, and Viktor can't see his face but he knows his blush is marvelous. He grins.

“What else could it possibly have been?” he says innocently, and he can practically feel the heat of Yuuri’s embarrassment. This is fun. Chris would say he was being an incorrigible flirt.

“No idea,” Katsuki mumbles. It’s a shame, really, how alive he is. Viktor would never wish this type of half-existence on anyone, but commiserating with Katsuki Yuuri is awfully comforting.

Viktor focuses on his warmth behind him, a mechanism to ground himself in this physical plane and this point in time, and Katsuki Yuuri shivers. Shifts a fraction of a centimeter away from him, before he catches himself.

“I’m sorry. I didn't mean--”

“I don't mind.” Viktor doesn't feel temperature quite like he used to, but he is aware that his presence chills a room by several degrees. He doesn't want to make Yuuri uncomfortable.

He wants to touch him, though. This is a persistent desire.

He calculates an angle to fall backwards on the bed that will let him touch Katsuki Yuuri for just an instant, and does so. His fingers pass through his shoulder, frustratingly noncorporeal, and Katsuki flinches. Viktor smiles at the ceiling, then figures he should probably look more apologetic.

“Whoops,” he says, but does not lie and pretend he hadn't meant to do it. “Sorry. I just wanted to know what it felt like.”

Yuuri is blushing rather violently, despite Viktor’s freezing surroundings. He stammers, “What _what_ felt like?” which Viktor thinks is rather coquettish of him.

“This,” he says, and then swipes a hand through his shoulder again, and Katsuki yelps and bolts off the bed. Viktor laughs.

“Please _don't_ ,” Yuuri says desperately, and Viktor sobers in sudden response.

“I'm sorry,” he says. “I didn't mean to--”

“No, no, it's fine.” Deep breaths that demonstrate easily that it is not fine, that Viktor has crossed a line here. “I just--”

“God, I’m really sorry,” he apologizes again, hastily. He had forgotten for a moment that not all living people coexist like he and Chris used to, that not everyone in the world is their kind of damningly touchy. He had forgotten because the way he and Chris had lived is exactly how Katsuki acts with Phichit (albeit with considerable less ass-grabbing), and Viktor has been nostalgic for their easy tactility for a while. “That was rude of me. It won't happen again.”

“No, no.” Yuuri smiles placatingly, tilts his gaze to the ceiling to rein in his breathing. “My fault. I just--you surprised me.”  
  
Viktor’s hands carve shapes out of the air above him dreamily, but he withdraws them to his chest when he realizes that Katsuki had still not returned to the edge of the bed. That he is watching him.

“Tell me about Japan,” Viktor entreats pleasantly, to draw him back. He wants him, his incorrigible warmth, close again. This is fatal attachment. Like the imprinting of a damn baby duck. Is this normal, for the dead, to become so quickly attached to the first living person that sees them? Is this what a haunting is? “I’ve never been.”

The mattress creaks as Katsuki slinks back to the bed and sits on the edge, and it sighs wonderfully as he eases onto his back besides Viktor. _Close_ , close enough to touch again. Viktor is having a hell of a time keep his hands to himself, even noncorporeal as they all. Beside him, Katsuki sighs. “Japan is...wonderful.”

“Yeah?” Viktor smiles. Closes his eyes. If he concentrates enough on mimicking slow human breathing and quieting his thoughts and on the warmth of Katsuki Yuuri beside him, the effect is almost deceptively like sleep. He doesn't sleep anymore, but sometimes he can pretend.

“Yeah,” Yuuri agrees. “My family runs an onsen in our hometown--a hot springs, you know.” Viktor doesn’t, but he nods like he does. “I work it during summers, when I go home. Thought I don't get to do that very much anymore.” Viktor feels his frown as if it is his own. His voice is gently reminiscent. “I miss it. I miss my family a lot.”

“I can understand that.” And Viktor likes this, the quiet confessional, more than he could possibly explain. But Katsuki turns to look at him, and he is already drawing away.

“I don't mean to talk about myself so much,” he begins hastily, and his warmth vanishes as quickly as the moment does. Viktor laments this, because he has hardly _said_ anything at all, and he wants to know more, wants to know it all.

He reaches out before he can help himself and his fingers lock around Yuuri’s wrist and they are solid as the living, and Yuuri looks at him with wide wide wide eyes. Panic builds in the line of his mouth and he snaps something Viktor cannot understand but it sounds like a plea, and Viktor withdraws his hand as quickly as his intoxicated thoughts will allow. Apologizes in a rush that is thick with Slavic consonants and god, this is a mess he is a mess he’s ruined everything because he can't keep his _hands_ to _himself_ he _always_ does this--

“I’m sorry,” Viktor says again, and all this excitement and all his previous contentment is being compensated for now with that heaviness he so hates because it means he is leaving, and he doesn't want to. “I’m sorry, I really don't mean to--” Be himself, really. This is how Viktor is, has always been, and leave it to him to become infatuated with the one person who doesn't appreciate it.

He’s never _pined_ before, but he decides now that it's awful. Even worse than the films make it seem.

* * *

 

“What the _fuck?”_

Viktor is lying on his back on the worn sofa, staring at the ceiling and trying to make sense of the stains that for all innocent, legal reasons should not exist. One of the dark, swelling offenses looks a lot like blood. Which is just gross.

At the sound of Phichit’s voice he looks lazily upward, and realizes that the undergrad student is staring at him. Not through him. _At him._

“Oh,” Viktor says, because he's a moron. He pitches his voice for something more cheerful. “Um. Hi! I’m--”

Phichit is having none of this. He takes a sharp step backward and spins on his heel, screeches down the hall, “Katsuki Yuuri, what the _fuck_ is some white twink doing on our sofa when I have a _midterm--”_

Viktor had known, and subsequently forgotten, about midterms. He feels like he should object to being called a twink, but there _is_ some foundation to the claim. And he fears mildly that Phichit might verbally eviscerate him if he says something of that nature now.

On the sofa, Viktor sits up. Katsuki Yuuri wanders out of his bedroom into the hall and leans sleepily against the doorframe.

“What are you yelling about now?” he mumbles, and it sounds like he's just woken up. He’s not wearing his glasses and his hair is gloriously messy and his sweater is riding up over his round stomach and Viktor thinks he looks too damn good for the situation, it just isn't _fair--_

Phichit gestures at Viktor with a sound that could possibly be described as an exasperated cry. Viktor blinks. Waves, and a Yuuri waves back drowsily before realization dawns.

“Oh,” he says.

 _“Oh!”_ Phichit shrieks. He can be very shrill, Phichit Chulanont. “Yuuri, I can't believe you didn't tell me you were sleeping with a fucking TA, what kind of best friend _are_ you--”

“I’m. Um. I’m not a TA.” The twink description is still up for debate. Viktor thinks to also object that he isn't sleeping with Katsuki Yuuri, but he remains silent on that subject. Anyway, Yuuri does it for him.

“I’m not--” He splutters. “Phichit, I’m not _sleeping_ with him--”

“Then who the hell is he?” Phichit Chulanont demands.

“He--um--” Yuuri looks to Viktor desperately. “He--lives here?”

“He _what?”_ Phichit is incredulous. He’s also mildly terrifying. It’s impressive--standing, Viktor has several inches on him in height. But he would not want to cross the kid, even in Viktor’s current nonphysical state. “He does _not--”_

“I’m dead,” Viktor volunteers helpfully, and from the hallway Yuuri looks at him sharply.

“Maybe don't lead every introduction with that, yeah?” he says scathingly. Viktor feels distinctly like he is blushing, which shouldn't be possible. Interesting.

 _“Yuuri!”_ Phichit snaps. “Explain!”

“Um.” His hand creeps to his face to push up glasses that are not there. Briefly, Katsuki Yuuri looks gloriously confused. Then he is back to being distraught. Viktor appreciates what both emotions do for his complexion. “We’re being...haunted?”

“And you appear to be _chill_ with that?”

Yuuri tugs his collar away from his throat nervously. “Well, um.” He gestures at Viktor, but it's not clear what he wishes to convey by it. “Yeah?”

“You're a whore.” Phichit tosses his book bag onto the side of the sofa opposite from Viktor. Yuuri attempts to splutter a response to such slander, but Phichit interrupts. “Prove it.”

He’s looking at Viktor. Viktor frowns. “Prove what?”

“Prove that you're a ghost, obviously.” Like it's that simple. Phichit Chulanont splays his fingers across his face, as if this encounter is exhausting him. “And please be quick about it. I have to study.”

Oh. What a damned time to be corporeal. Viktor can't even prove he’s dead by virtue of his transparency. He flounders. “I--I can’t? Prove it?”

“Hmm.” Phichit is studying him with a bored air now. “You don't look like a ghost.”

“Then what does a ghost _look_ like?” Viktor retaliates, too sharply. Phichit is looking dangerous again.

“A hell of a lot more impressive, twink.”

“Phichit--” Yuuri begins, scandalized, at the same time that Viktor suggests, “I don't have a pulse.”

Phichit looks at him with narrowed eyes. When Viktor hesitates, he scowls and dips his head impatiently. After another pause, Viktor offers him his wrist to confirm.

Phichit Chulanont’s heat is not as distinct as Yuuri’s. Viktor doesn't quite know what this means. Regardless, Phichit still recoils at the way contact with Viktor leaches the warmth from his hands, and he withdraws them quickly after deciding that yes, Viktor is very much dead and pulse-less. He looks decidedly unimpressed with this analysis.

Rather than commenting on such things, he merely says, “Stay out of my room. I’m very busy.”

“It’s my room too,” Yuuri protests, but Phichit does not seem to care. He swipes his book bag from the cushion beside Viktor and stalks to the hallway.

“It was nice meeting you,” Viktor tries sincerely, and Phichit snorts. He exchanges a long look and indecipherable words with Katsuki Yuuri. Whatever he says makes Yuuri blush. “My name’s Viktor, by the way.”

Phichit casts a murderous look back at him. Viktor’s only seen him this way once before, when he missed the submission deadline for a research paper on the relationship between American minority liberation movements and hip-hop in the nineties. As the target of this new rage, Viktor finds his current mood more terrifying. “Of course it is.”

Then he slams the door to their shared bedroom and Yuuri says, “Phichit, I need my _glasses,”_ and Phichit shouts something vicious but mercifully not English through the door. Yuuri does not retrieve his glasses. Instead he looks helplessly at Viktor, who is still sitting on the sofa, and shoots for a gentle smile.

“Stress,” he offers apologetically. “But I think he likes you.”

Viktor isn't quite convinced.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is just a bit of a more casual side project I've had since the summer for which I've been debating posting the first part in time for Halloween. I decided in favor of such, mostly as a procrastination tactic for studying for my own midterms (I make poor decisions). the title comes from the Vampire Weekend song of the same name.
> 
> as always, thank you for reading, and feel free to leave comments or kudos if you'd like! xx


	2. II

Phichit Chulanont does indeed warm to Viktor. It takes him longer than it had taken Yuuri, and Viktor tries valiantly not to let this bother him. But he’s a people person--or was--and not being immediately liked is a new, unpleasant experience.

The morning after his last midterm, Viktor finds a Buddhist holy text sitting open on the kitchen table, and a sticky note slapped onto the exposed page. There’s a inked replica of an engraving above the note, of some ghastly emaciated creature Viktor would prefer never to encounter in any afterlife. He can't read the original script, but Phichit has helpfully translated for him.

_“hungry ghost” = victor, the dead guy living in my apartment_

“That's--that’s not how I spell my name.”

Phichit is eating cold leftover takeout and scrolling through his phone. He hardly looks up. “Isn’t the resemblance uncanny?”

“I don't think so.”

“Hm.” He flicks through something on his phone dismissively. He’s smiling, nearly. “Yuuri said you've been here the whole time. And didn't bother speaking to me once.”

“I _tried--”_

“I’m kidding.” Oh. Viktor nods, once. “Yuuri seems to like you.”

_Thank god,_ Viktor wants to say. _I’d been worried._ Also: _Can you give me an in-depth analysis on why you think so? I need to know--_

“That's--that’s good,” he chokes instead, and Phichit’s eyes flicker to him suspiciously.

“He's my best friend.”

“Okay?” Viktor realizes belatedly that this could very well become one of those protective wingman speeches that are so prevalent a trope in American movies. He is relieved when it does not.

“Phichit?” The beautiful grad student in question wanders into the kitchen, damp from a shower and still sleepy-eyed. Viktor again thinks that he had no business looking so nice without an ounce of effort. He watches Yuuri lean against the back of Phichit’s chair and rest his chin on the top of the younger student’s head. “Have you seen my laptop? I can't seem to…” But the query drifts into nothingness when he makes eye contact with Viktor.

Viktor, who is now folded up on the kitchen counter like a shy child. Viktor, who can feel warmth creep across his skin in a way that is distinctly terrifying because it is new and as far as he knows the dead don't generate heat, such a thing being decidedly _impossible--_

Viktor, who hopes he is not looking as viciously jealous of Phichit Chulanont at the present moment as he feels.

(Though, by the not-cruel smile Phichit folds into his hand, the knowing light in his eyes, it is evident that Viktor is not doing so well at hiding his feelings on the current arrangement.)

“Viktor. Good morning,” Yuuri says dreamily, and he stretches his arms above his head and yawns and this is _too much_ it isn't _fair--_

“Your laptop is next to the sofa,” Viktor blurts, without even returning the greeting. “I--um, I can go get it--”

Yuuri blinks. _God_ , he's so pretty. Viktor is dead and he is pining so _horribly_ and whatever he did in life to deserve this type of torment in the afterlife surely must have been heinous. He can't imagine foisting this type of temptation on a good person.

“Oh. You don't have to. I've got it.”

“No--I’ve--I’ve got it.” He's up and off the counter, slipping past them both before either has a chance to look at him too closely and at least he isn't _blushing_. That would be truly awful.

This is comical. Once upon a time, Viktor had been a near celebrity on campus, solely for his good looks and playboy talents. He’d never been flustered in front of a boy, no matter how soft and pretty and damningly kind he had been. Viktor hadn’t even known such a boy was his type until now. He’d usually entertained men the likes of Christophe at the flat, elegant and confident and with the tendency to sleep with him and then never text back again.

Katsuki Yuuri is painfully-- _painfully_ \--none of those things. If Viktor wasn't already dead, this unrequited bullshit straight out of a teen film would surely be the death of him.

His hands are solid when he grabs the laptop, and this is a mercy. He refuses to embarrass himself further this morning. When he returns to the kitchen and presses the Macbook into Yuuri’s arms, Viktor is furiously warm. And he still doesn't know what this _means_.

“Um…” There are no words for what he is thinking. He looks at Yuuri helplessly. For too long.

“Thank you,” Yuuri murmurs. He holds Viktor’s gaze, his own expression still hazy and his eyes dark enough to drown in. Viktor is so utterly, completely fucked. He wants this so, so badly. “You didn't have to--to do that.”

If Viktor didn't think him wholly too kind for this type of behavior, he would believe him to be mocking him. Phichit Chulanont surely is. Viktor hears him mutter something about _thirsty ghosts_ , and decides that he wants to die. Again.

“I have to go write a paper.” Yuuri is looking down at Phichit now. The latter nods boredly. “I’ll be in the bedroom, okay? If you need me.”

“Won’t,” Phichit says through a mouthful, and Yuuri snorts. Pushes his bangs from his face and looks glorious while doing so.

“Alright.”

Then he goes, and Viktor drags his hands down his face and paces the length of the room furiously enough to wear grooves in the tile. At the table, Phichit laughs.

“Don't _laugh_ at me,” Viktor says, his voice thick with grief. “This is _tragic.”_

Phichit drawls, “As far as subjects of infatuation go, Yuuri definitely isn't the worst.”

“I’m _not--”_

“Of course not.” Phichit exaggerates the shake of his head. Silence stretches between them. Viktor feels like weeping.

“Does--does he know?” Viktor demands finally, helplessly. He couldn't have imagined prior to this that he would be asking Phichit Chulanont for advice on his Katsuki Yuuri Situation. Incredible.

“Well.” Phichit looks nearly apologetic. “You aren't exactly a natural with subtlety.”

_“God.”_

“But.” Phichit gestures at him with the takeout container. He is such a college student. Living with these two for nearly two semesters now has almost made Viktor miss it. “At risk of betraying my best friend’s confidence here--he definitely isn't objecting.”

Viktor’s eyes widen. He must look apoplectic.

But, he convinces himself, this is good. This is fantastic. Disregarding the obvious problems, such as Katsuki Yuuri being alive and Viktor being dead and still head-over-heels in worship of him, this could make it all work.

Wonderful. In any case, Viktor has to do something. The pining is getting old, anyway.

* * *

 

Slowly, they become a sort of family.

To be sure, it's a chaotic, confusing type of arrangement, and Viktor is not quite sure how it came about, and he doesn't quite care either outside of the fact that Yuuri lets him touch him now. But it is a family.

He’s sitting on the sofa, and Yuuri has his feet thrown into his lap, and despite the early Californian spring there are blankets heaped on top of them both in an effort to combat Viktor’s habit of leaching all heat from the environment. Yuuri is reading a book. Or rather, he is trying to read a book, but he keeps drifting asleep and dropping the novel onto his face. Viktor is trying not to stare, but the repetitive process is awfully endearing.

It’s getting late. Phichit is cursed with a seven p.m. class that endures until nine on Fridays, and so they are alone. Viktor would love to take advantage of such a situation. But he keeps his cold hands to himself.

“You can just sleep. I'm sure whatever class that’s for can wait the weekend.”

Yuuri is stubborn. He does not appreciate being told how to do his homework, and emphasizes this with a light kick to Viktor’s knee. “M’almost done. Leave me alone.”

“Alright.” And Viktor leaves him alone for a few agonizing minutes, and immediately as he opens his mouth to say something-- _anything_ , because Viktor is not used to sitting still nor silent and this is positively murderous--a device buzzes on Yuuri’s person. A cell phone.

Yuuri tosses the book in Viktor’s direction and answers the call. His greeting is in Japanese, and Viktor blinks to hear him speak his own language. He’d grown so used to Yuuri _here,_ with him, both California transplants distinctly out of their elements, that he’d forgotten that they are not quite unified in their differences.

Not, of course, that he is displeased with this. Rather, Viktor is delighted. Language had been his specialty at university, and even though he doesn't understand a word of Japanese he can still appreciate it. Especially when it is Katsuki Yuuri speaking it.

Yuuri’s tone is gently excited, and privately Viktor smiles to hear it. He lets his thoughts and hands wander in this free time, tipping his head back against the sofa and burrowing his hands into the mountain of blankets on his lap. Yuuri hisses when his fingers brush his ankle, and Viktor looks over to him curiously.

“Cold,” he mouths, and then something rapid and reassuring in his own tongue. Viktor grins at him.

Yuuri is still speaking when Viktor wraps a hand firmly around his ankle, and his reaction is thus instinctive. Forgivable, then. He spasms, kicks Viktor very firmly in the stomach (it doesn't hurt, but it does surprise), and spits, “I _hate_ you,” into the receiver.

Viktor's eyes are wide. He laughs. Yuuri looks mortified.

“No, mama, I--sorry, I mean--” He scrambles to relay the same sentiment in Japanese, glaring at Viktor the majority of the time. The latter winks. Waves innocently, and then shoves his entire hand up Yuuri’s trouser leg mercilessly.

Katsuki Yuuri kicks him in the face.

“Oh my _god,_ I'm so _sorry.”_ The phone, his conversation with his mother, drops forgotten to his chest. Yuuri looks altogether too concerned for a dead man’s wellbeing. “I’m so sorry, Viktor, I didn't _mean to_ \--shit, are you okay?”

“Your mother is still on the phone,” Viktor points out. “M’fine.” Yuuri looks at him skeptically, and Viktor feels something like warmth creep into his chest entirely of its own volition. He beams reassuringly as Yuuri swipes up his phone and apologizes profusely to his mother.

Viktor wonders what kind of woman Yuuri’s mother is. Definitely something wonderful, to produce a man like Yuuri. He’d love to meet her, in another lifetime.

Viktor slips out of focus in that way he does while he is watching Yuuri, and he knows he is romanticizing but he simply cannot help but picture them both exactly like this--sleepy, tousled, entirely at ease with one another, Viktor so in love it bleeds from him--but on Katsuki Yuuri’s bed rather than the sofa.

“Viktor.” Yuuri has been saying his name. His phone conversation with his mother is over. His tone is gently concerned. “Viktor, are you okay? You’re still here, yeah?”

Viktor shakes such impossible thoughts from his head and replaces the dreamy expression on his face with a generic but convincing smile. He wonders how long he has been staring. “Yeah! I’m still here.”

“I’m really sorry. I didn't mean to kick you.”

“Mm.” He waves a dismissive hand. “Not like it hurt. And it’s my fault anyway.”

“Well. Yeah.” Yuuri shrugs. Viktor lets his mouth drop open in faux offense, and Yuuri hurries onward. “I told my mom you were a study partner.”

He told his mother about him. They're practically married, at this point.

Viktor hooks a finger underneath the broken spine of his book and flings it at Yuuri’s chest. The latter catches it with a short, sharp intake of breath as it knocks against his sternum.

“You mean you didn't tell her about the ghost living in your apartment?” The one whose haunting is now entirely based on how infatuated he is with a certain Japanese conservation student. The one who is currently envisioning in vivid detail what it would be like to crawl into Katsuki Yuuri’s lap and leach all the warmth from him, to feel his fingers rub gentle circles on his temples and scalp and down his back, to embrace this lovesickness without inhibition and press his cheek to Yuuri’s chest and feel the gentle vibrations of his voice as he speaks Japanese to his wonderful mother and tells her about Viktor, his lovely Russian boyfriend--

_Stop._

And it's fun, this daydreaming, until it is not. Eventually Viktor has to wake up and face reality, doesn't he? And it's obvious that none of those things could ever come about, because Yuuri is kind but not kind enough to pity-date a dead man. Because Viktor doesn't want _pity_ , anyway, he just wants to be real and solid and here all the time instead of constantly tipping over the edge of this world and the next. Because Viktor is dead, and Katsuki Yuuri is too sunshiny and wonderful and he deserves more than that.

“No,” Yuuri laughs, tipping his chin forward and closing his eyes and bringing his hand up to cover his mouth self-consciously. “No, I don't think she’d believe me. Or maybe she would, and want to fly out here to meet you. Either option is a bit daunting.”

“She sounds great.”

Yuuri sighs happily. Viktor is seized by an overwhelming desire to make him sigh like that, one day. “She is. I miss her.”

“Yeah.” Viktor studies his palms.

“Do you--did you--” Yuuri is looking at him now, floundering, and though Viktor had hoped to avoid this thread of conversation, he answers for Yuuri’s sake. For the sake of the blush spreading rapidly across his cheeks as he realizes that his query into Viktor’s past life is perhaps insensitive. Perhaps a wrong move.

“Yeah.” Viktor frowns. “Someone. It’s--it's hard to remember though.”

“That’s okay,” Yuuri mumbles, the flush now spreading mercilessly to his neck. “Don't worry about it. I’m sorry for--for bringing it up.”

“It’s okay.” But Viktor’s still frowning, and the empty cold settles back in gleefully. He’s oh so tired. He wishes he could sleep, just for a while. “Two people. Not--not quite mine.”

“I don't…” Understand. Of course not. Viktor is not making sense. He’s an idiot. His memory was never unfailing, but it's never been as useless as it’s been since he died.

“I don't know.” But he does know this: Katsuki Yuuri, reaching across the soft topography of blankets between them, taking his wrist gently in his hand, and he must have steeled himself for the cold because he does not shiver. Instead, he smiles. Softly, like he does everything else, and Viktor is gone. Metaphorically, of course. This time.

He thinks the English word is perhaps _lovestruck_.

“If it helps,” Yuuri is saying, quietly, and Viktor looks at him wonderingly. “We’re here. If you ever want us to--to try and find someone for you, we--I can do that. For you.”

For _him._

Viktor nods. Thinks, _oh if only I were alive--_

But it's a useless, terrible wish. Better to let it die.

* * *

 

“Adopted.” That has been the word on his tongue for the past two weeks. Those have been the syllables tormenting him for too, too long. “I was adopted. I just--just remembered.”

Yuuri is currently poring over a textbook, but he taps a pencil to his lips at this new revelation. He blinks, and then looks up and smiles at Viktor.

“That's a very good start.”

“I--” No words come to him. He looks, too embarrassed now, at his fingers. He must have died with his nails bitten to the quick, because they are eternally short and hideous now. He hates them.

Yuuri tips his head to the side. Everything about him is endearing. “Are you doing okay? Viktor? With the remembering?”

“Yeah,” he replies, too quickly. His tongue betrays him, tripping over the lone syllable. Viktor shakes his head. “No. I don't know.”

“It’s okay to not know.”

But is it okay to not want to remember? Because Viktor is suddenly not sure if this is something he wants anymore. Being dead is bearable when he can’t remember living. He is not sure it will be so when he can.

“Can we--can we do something?” He is decaying here at the hands of this stagnation. He knows Yuuri ought to be studying, but Viktor craves distraction like nothing he’s known before in this moment. “Anything?”

“Sure.” Yuuri pushes his chair away from the desk without a second thought. Viktor does not deserve him. “What do you want to do?”

He fakes hesitation in his reply. Viktor knows exactly what he wants.

“Can you...can you cook?”

Yuuri blinks. His eyebrows knit together fractionally. “You want me to cook?” Viktor can't eat, in this manifestation of being. Yuuri knows this. His confusion is thus justified.

“I just want to watch,” Viktor confesses, and he is _pathetic_. Yuuri smiles. Then indulges him.

“Of course.”

Katsuki Yuuri and Phichit Chulanont are poor college students, but they are also food snobs, and the culmination of these two traits usually manifests itself in a strangely niche-specific grocery list pinned to the fridge halfway through the week, after Phichit eats the last of the yogurt at three a.m. or Yuuri gets a sudden craving for something that is not dry cereal and boxed wine. The current contents of the fridge are thus sparse, but retain a certain amount of endearing character. Viktor thinks he might be able to pick this fridge out of a lineup as theirs, he's become so familiar with it. If that was ever a situation that would come about, of course.

“My mother would do this better,” Yuuri is saying, as Viktor perches on the counter so he can better observe the goings-on below. “But I suppose if you're not going to be eating it, there's no harm in showing you. I wouldn't want your first impression to be something I’ve made, but--” He shrugs. Viktor smiles softly.

“I’m sure it's wonderful.”

“Well…” Yuuri tips up his chin to look at him, and Viktor imagines what it would be like to pull him closer and gently place his mouth against his. To feel Yuuri’s heart jump against his ribs and see his hands flutter because he is not sure where to put them and hear him sigh in that way Viktor loves while pressed to his lips. He longs to see Katsuki Yuuri flushed and quietly wanting and perhaps he also wants to see him so ruined from Viktor’s kissing prowess that he can do nothing but lean against him and sigh. Viktor can do that. Could do that, once upon a time. He sees no reason why he should not grace Katsuki Yuuri with his talents.

“It would be wonderful, if my mother was making it,” Yuuri continues after a weighted pause. His cheeks are pink. His glasses fog up when he is embarrassed. Viktor hadn't known that was a phenomenon which actually occurred in real life. “This will be subpar.”

“Stop that.” Viktor laughs. “I've seen you cook. It’s always gorgeous.”

“Presentation is important,” Yuuri murmurs, a flattered smile flickering on his lips. “You learn that quickly at an onsen.”

After this he falls into silence, and silence is usually not easy for Viktor but this one is. He leans against the cabinets and watches Yuuri go about his task with an incredible sort of muscle memory. At one point, he closes his eyes and mumbles something to himself in Japanese while carrying out a step, like reciting the recipe in his mother’s tongue will grant him her experience. The humble confidence in his expression is damningly attractive.

When he is done, Viktor realizes that he has been following the course of his hands more intently than the cooking process itself. Viktor has no idea what has occurred to bring whatever Yuuri has cooked him into existence, but he does have the lines of his palms and the nervous tremble to his long fingers memorized. He knows exactly where he’d prefer to kiss his hands first, and where he’d save for last.

“Viktor?” He is staring. God _damn_ him. What a lovesick moron. Viktor is grateful he cannot blush.

“Hmm?” He feigns nonchalance admirably. Yuuri blinks up at him.

“You looked far away,” he murmurs, and he can--and does--blush. It's so very charming. “I was just checking--”

“I’m here.” Viktor beams. “Just thinking.”

Yuuri snaps off the stove and removes the pan from the burner. Viktor contemplates briefly the action of placing his own hand on the scalding burner, to test if anything has changed in his biochemical makeup. Last month, he still had not felt it. Last week, it had been warm.

“What were you thinking about?” Yuuri hums distractedly. He’s humoring him. But Viktor is still thinking about the stove burner, and answers honestly.

“You.”

Yuuri looks up at him quickly, his expression distinctly a deer-in-headlights imitation. For his part, Viktor thinks he might be dying. Again.

The sound of the front door opening saves him the trouble of having to explain himself. Phichit’s voice carries clearly through the kitchen.

“Yuuri! I hope you cooked for me, too, or I’m going to have to do something about this toxic friendship of ours.” Phichit positions himself in the entryway and leans dramatically against the wall. Winks at Viktor, and reaffixes the long-suffering expression on his face in time for Yuuri’s attention. “Oh _darling_ , you did! You're too good to me.”

Viktor seizes this opportunity to flee. Yuuri doesn't even see him go. Phichit's voice pursues him for a distance, and so do Yuuri’s gentle replies, until he’s drawn himself far enough away that he can be himself again. Can loosen this firm grip on corporeality and feel the weightedness slip from his limbs and he's nonexistent again. His hands slip through the door to Yuuri’s bedroom when he tries the handle.

And it's better this way. It really is.

* * *

 

Yuuri’s hands are warm. Every gentle touch of Viktor’s pulls that warmth from his skin to the curve of Viktor's own mouth and this is good, this is perfect, this is all he’s ever wanted from this half-existence, all he's ever wanted from living too--

He kisses the heel of his palm, traces the crease of his wrist with his tongue, and Yuuri tips his head back and sighs. A light flush graces his cheeks, and Viktor turns his hand over and splays his fingers and kisses the spaces in between them. He loves his hands. He loves him. The revelation is not scary, nor much of a revelation at all. Viktor feels as if he's always known.

“Viktor.”

“Mm.”

“Viktor.” A hesitant hand on his knee shakes him awake. He is not kissing Katsuki Yuuri’s fingers. He is sitting cross-legged on his counter, and he is blocking the toaster. “You were spooking me.”

“This is a haunting,” Viktor remarks gravely, to disguise the disappointment in the set of his shoulders. He forces his fingers to unlace themselves in his lap and shifts himself to the side of the counter. Toaster, unblocked. He watches Yuuri set about the process of toast-making and studies him quietly.

He is decidedly not Viktor’s type. Viktor likes sharp angles and certainty and a proud posture. He likes firm jaws and a bit of stubble and a lazy gaze that promises even as he is kissing him that this will not progress past the hookup stage, that he may not call or text for days until he is feeling up for sex again. Viktor is a simple man with simple desires, and Yuuri is the antithesis of everything he's ever dreamed.

Katsuki Yuuri is shy and nervous and folds into himself when he is embarrassed. Katsuki Yuuri carries wonderful extra weight that curves his hips and softens his jawline and gives him clearly creased laugh lines around his mouth. Katsuki Yuuri is clean-shaven. Katsuki Yuuri’s expression is never lazy, especially not when he looks at Viktor.

And Viktor is so, so in love with him.

Viktor waits as long as he can bear before he speaks, and what comes out of his mouth is this:

“You know, I miss getting drunk.”

Yuuri’s gaze flickers to him politely, but the smile that creeps across his face is genuine. The butter knife scrapes across his toast. “You really aren't missing much.”

“No. I guess not.” What a stupid thing to say. What he must think of him. “I guess it's more...I don't know.” He doesn't. God, he is idiotic. “It's the feeling. Of it. You know.”

“I--” Yuuri frowns. “I don't know what you mean.”

“It's like--” In his efforts to explain, Viktor jabs a hand too emphatically at Yuuri, and the latter flinches. Steps back. “Sorry.”

“No, you’re fine.”

Still, Viktor withdraws his hand. Attempts, “It's like--like--I don't know the words.” His mouth wasn't made for English either. He’s forced it to mold around softer consonants in these past years, but self-expression is a very different feat from the hurdles of basic grammar. “It’s like I’m holding on so--so tightly to being here, really being here, and if--if I were to let go of this--this _countertop_ or something--”

“You wouldn't be here anymore,” Yuuri provides the words. “And you want to--what?” The question isn't mocking, nor accusatory. It simply inquires.

“Be here,” Viktor murmurs. “But not have to _try_ so hard to be here. I want to--”

His hands are fluttering in the air before him, distinctly lost, and when Yuuri catches one and entwines it with his own fingers, it is like he has plucked Viktor from an eternal type of limbo and held him still. And Viktor is here, for this moment, to stay.

“Does this help?” Yuuri asks softly, and his voice attempts professionalism but his blush betrays him. The heat of it clouds his glasses, and he uses his other hand to push the lenses upwards to sit on his head. His eyes slide out of focus a bit when he looks at Viktor next, and this is _so much_ Viktor feels as if he’s going to _cry--_

“Yes,” he breathes, and when he does loosen his grip on this plane of existence he finds that it is no harder to be corporeal and present here. Yuuri is anchoring him to this place, this kitchen and this countertop with the heat of his palm, and Viktor could never express sufficient gratitude.

He thinks, if it were possible, he would most definitely be weeping.

It is not a conscious decision of Viktor’s to draw Yuuri’s hand to his mouth, nor is it to place a chaste kiss to the back of his hand, but when he does so he finds that it is not only _wonderful_ but it is not enough. Yuuri’s eyes are wide wide wide but he does not protest and does not pull away and at the moment this is more than acceptable to Viktor. He moves forward.

He dips his head and traces the path of hard bone beneath soft skin past his hand and to the tips of each of his fingers. When he reaches the last of them Viktor sighs, takes his palm in both hands and turns it to meet his lips again and this time it is not a dream but might as well be for the sheer impossibility of what is happening here: he is kissing Katsuki Yuuri’s hands.

Viktor follows the heart line of Yuuri’s palm with the edge of his tongue and raises his eyes to his face, and Yuuri’s lips are parted in wonder and his cheeks are pink and his eyes are closed in gentle trust. And Viktor has seen him undone and at his worst in these past months, in the grip of an all-consuming panic attack over his grad thesis and absolutely tearful over the latest phone call home and so drunk that he can’t stand and must lean heavily on Phichit, slurring confessions of some nature in Japanese, but _this_ \--this is the height of vulnerability. And Yuuri’s given it, here, to Viktor.

He's too tall, up on the counter, to attempt anything bolder, but when he finishes with his hands Viktor presses his own palm to Yuuri’s cheek and leaves it there. Yuuri leans into the contact, thought it takes him a moment to be conscious of the action, and when he opens his eyes it is as if he has just woken up. Dark pupils, hazy expression, lips moving gently along to silent litanies. He blinks sleepily, and the movement rips Viktor’s heart in half.

“Nikiforov,” Viktor says, his hand still cupped around his cheek, and he feels the confusion knit itself into Yuuri’s dreamy expression but he is too excited to care. “I just remembered. That's--that's my name.” And he's up and off the counter and his fingers are wrapped firmly around Yuuri’s wrist and he is tugging him to his own laptop and entreating him desperately to open it, to type a search because he's _remembered_ , he has, he knows who he _is--_

“Wait. Viktor, Viktor, wait.” Yuuri is not a tactile being, not with Viktor, and so the way he places his hand on his chest is particularly notable. “Are you sure you want to--to know?”

And _yes_ , of course he does, what a silly question, and Viktor is urging him onward so vehemently that Yuuri gives in easily. “Okay. You'll have to spell it for me though.”

Without realization of how such a thing came to be, Viktor has twined his arm with Yuuri’s, and he is practically poring over the laptop screen over Yuuri’s shoulder. His cheek is pressed tightly to the edge of his shoulder, and his voice sends real tremors through Yuuri’s spine. And how wonderful this all is. Viktor would not trade it for living if given the chance, in this moment.

Midway through the spelling of his surname--he’s on the letter f, and with each letter he presses closer to Katsuki Yuuri and edges nearer to the screen--he pauses. The momentum behind this endeavor suddenly fades, and his voice quiets with it. Respectfully, Yuuri waits for him to continue, though he could probably spell the remainder on his own--just an _o-r-o-v_ , typically Russian and achingly common--but Viktor does not. Continue.

“I don't…” Suddenly, he is not sure. He doesn't think he wants to know how lived, if it means learning how he died. He doesn't know. “I don't think…”

“It's okay,” Yuuri murmurs. Carefully, decisively, he removes his hands from the keyboard. “You can say no.”

The desire to cry returns, though it is no longer a giddy feeling. Viktor--Nikiforov, Nikiforov, _Nikiforov_ , that's his _name_ \--presses his face into Yuuri’s shoulder and allows that silent sob to escape him. Dizzily, he watches Yuuri erase the search from the screen. The blinking, expectant cursor is accusing, and he can't bear to look at it.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles. “I just...I don't…”

“You have no reason to apologize.” Yuuri’s voice is gentle, and this is almost what Viktor had imagined, the other night, except that he is miserable and crying and they are pathetically commiserating in the kitchen instead of Yuuri’s bed. This is what he has dreamed, only corrupted by reality and the unavoidable fact that Viktor is an absolute pathetic moron. “You have absolutely nothing to be sorry for.”

“I--” There is no finishing that sentence. Viktor allows himself this silent moment in Katsuki Yuuri’s presence, and then he disentangles his arm from his and stands up. And he leaves.

He is so very, very sorry.

* * *

 

“I’m _drunk.”_

He really is. He is completely, utterly drunk--though mercifully not the type of drunk that makes him shed his clothes. This version of Katsuki Yuuri is a sleepy, stumbling type of inebriated. Endearingly cute, as opposed to dangerously magnetic.

Phichit Chulanont, perched on the windowsill and smoking through the opened screen, is equally non-sober. “Yes,” he agrees unspecifically, and tips his head back against the wall.

Selfishly, Viktor Nikiforov is lying on the majority of the sofa. He is hoping, also selfishly, that Katsuki Yuuri will object to this.

“Viktor,” Yuuri says, and Viktor has his arm flung over his eyes and pretends he does not hear. Viktor is, as always, damningly sober.

_“Viktor,”_ Yuuri whines sloppily. “Pay attention to me.”

He makes it to the sofa, places a hand firmly on Viktor’s chest. Viktor is corporeal at the moment--he's often corporeal, lately--and the contact makes him start.

“Yuuri.” He removes his wrist from over his eyes. Makes no effort to correct this situation yet, though he knows he should. He really should. Katsuki Yuuri is not a reliable drunk. “I’m paying attention.”

Yuuri surveys his position on the sofa, possibly judging if there is room to force himself onto the cushions as well, and disappointingly decides that there is not. Instead, he slides clumsily to the floor and leans against the sofa, turning his face sideways so that Viktor could touch his lips, if he so desired.

“Not enough attention,” Yuuri says petulantly. Viktor attempts to soothe this complaint chastely, tracing a vague shape into Yuuri’s shoulder with his left hand. Yuuri does not shiver at the contact; perhaps he is too warm to notice the cold.

From the windowsill, Phichit watches them quietly. Guilt at some unspecified action of his own nearly makes Viktor withdraw his hand. Instead, he allows it to drift to Yuuri’s temples, pushing his bangs up and out of his pink-flushed face quietly. Yuuri leans into the contact, and his lips part like they always do when he lets Viktor touch him. The heat of his body is almost unbearable.

Suddenly, Viktor stops. Removes his fingers from Yuuri’s face. Across the room, Phichit blinks at him languidly. Yuuri murmurs some vague protest at having been denied any sort of touch, and Viktor cards his hand through his hair once. Yuuri sighs.

“That feels nice,” he murmurs, and Viktor indulges him with another gentle run of his fingers against his scalp. Yuuri blinks at him sleepily.

“I like you,” he remarks plainly, though his tongue is heavy and trips over the confession. “I never thought I’d like the ghost haunting my apartment.”

“Did you ever consider there would be a ghost haunting your apartment in the first place?” Viktor wonders. Yuuri laughs.

“I don't think so,” he mumbles. “I don't know if I ever believed in ghosts.”

Viktor Nikiforov says, “Me neither,” and Yuuri hums. He and Phichit had been drinking wine to celebrate some monumental occasion Viktor has already forgotten. He is quite sure Yuuri doesn’t remember anymore either, but the giddy warmth of the scene is nice nevertheless.

The back of Yuuri’s head bumps against Viktor’s stomach, and the former regards Viktor’s complete ownership of all sitting room on the sofa now with some indignance. His mouth tests soundless words for a moment before he settles on: “I want to come up there too.”

Viktor sits up to free the majority of the sofa for Yuuri’s use, and the latter crawls up onto the cushions. Breath Viktor doesn't need, but has begun to use just for the sake of emulating living, hitches in his throat when Yuuri rests his head on his thigh.

“You know,” Yuuri says quietly, oblivious to the internal crisis waging war in him. Yuuri’s face is turned away from him, outward to the rest of the room, and everything he does is dream-heavy and soft. Viktor’s hand rests lightly on the top of his head, because he can think of nothing else to do with it and idleness is making him anxious. “You’re not quite so cold anymore, Viktor.”

“Is that so,” Viktor remarks softly, though the statement makes something in his chest leap against his ribs. Yuuri hums an affirmative against his thigh, tucks a hand beneath his own cheek. Viktor does not touch his mouth.

“Mm,” Yuuri mumbles. “S’nice, I think.”

Viktor thinks so too.

* * *

 

Kissing is not quite the same, when one is dead.

Though perhaps it is. Viktor can't quite remember the details of what it was like to kiss when he was alive--all the men he had brought home had been more interested in other things, and kissing had always felt simply like a means to an end with them. Like something to placate Viktor while he took his clothes off.

He had kissed Chris a few times, he remembers. For fun, mostly, when they'd gone to parties and Viktor had drunk too much and Chris was a bit too stoned to care about the way his mouth moved on his neck. Sometimes it had been for something more than fun--Viktor was far from unattractive, and Chris was pretty in the sharp-jawed, sharp-eyed way Viktor had always liked best.

But even then, though the vague fragments of memory are warmer than the others, though they bring something that could be a smile to the curve of his lips, Viktor can't quite _place_ the memorized concept of kissing. Perhaps this is why kissing Katsuki Yuuri feels so novel. Like Viktor has never been kissed before.

Because he is, undeniably, the one being kissed here. Katsuki Yuuri is sitting in his lap, legs tucked beneath his body, hands pressed flat on either side of Viktor’s face. Viktor has his eyes closed, face tilted back, and his mind is quite separate from the rest of him. He has never been so useless. He is certain this is nothing but a very, very good dream.

“Just tell me,” Yuuri murmurs against his mouth, “if you want me to stop.”

The thought would have made Viktor laugh, if he could have remembered how to do anything but sigh. His body is only half corporeal--Viktor himself is never quite _real_ , even when corporeal, not even when Yuuri wants him to be--and yet he is completely malleable beneath Yuuri’s hands. His lips part to release something akin to a whine, and Katsuki Yuuri smiles. He places a light, chaste kiss to his nose, another between his eyes, and Viktor melts. Quite literally.

He does not know he is sinking until his shoulder makes contact with the worn mattress, and he cannot recall where he is for several additional seconds. Yuuri has not fallen quite so gracelessly, has somehow retained possession of his common sense enough to wrap his thighs around Viktor's waist, and he places a gentle hand on his cheek. Viktor is past buzzed--he is irrevocably drunk on human contact. He never wants this to end.

Perhaps this is why ghosts haunt the living. To touch them is sublime.

They are in Katsuki Yuuri’s room, on Katsuki Yuuri’s bed. Phichit Chulanont is at class. Viktor has dreamt of this a thousand times, and he is so heavy with the notion of how perfectly _happy_ he is that he does nothing. He blinks upward into Katsuki Yuuri’s face and remembers that he loves him.

“Are you alright?” Yuuri asks him softly. “You’re a bit quiet.”

_I love you,_ Viktor says, except he doesn't. He closes his eyes and nods. Yuuri traces the bridge of his nose, the curve of his upper lip, with a fingertip.

Viktor doesn't know if it would be appropriate to tell him that he loves him. Viktor doesn't think he’s told anyone he loves them before--at least, not soberly. Not sincerely. But the truth of the statement would be rather overshadowed by the fact that there is nothing to be done about it. Viktor is dead. Yuuri is not. None of Christophe Giacometti’s widely sought-after romantic advice had ever touched on a situation like theirs.

“Yuuri--” he begins, and his voice catches on the consonants. Katsuki Yuuri dips his head and for the briefest moment his cheek is flush with Viktor’s. He is intoxicating. He is so very warm.

“Tell me,” Yuuri whispers in his ear, and he laughs too, a soft, charming sound. “Whatever you’d like.”

Viktor blinks. His eyes are wide. It is too much, inappropriate and maybe impossible, to request what he’d like. He settles for this: “Kiss me.”

And what a wonderful kiss it becomes. Viktor has just remembered his name, and yet he promptly forgets it when Yuuri hooks his fingers in his hair and takes his face to the side, traces a line of unbearable heat along his jaw. He thinks that if Yuuri were not holding him so tightly, Viktor would surely slip from this side of the world. He is so lost. He cannot bring himself to care.

“I’m glad you're haunting us, Viktor Nikiforov,” Yuuri whispers against his throat, and Viktor agrees. This is better than being alive and alone. Katsuki Yuuri, Phichit Chulanont, this shitty apartment on the edge of campus which has become a vessel for a lovestruck ghost--Viktor could not imagine wanting for more, in this moment.

Except: “I think,” Viktor Nikiforov says, “I think I want to know now.” But not by typing his name into a Google search, not by reading his own obituary on some internet archive of Los Angeles deaths. He doesn't think he's brave enough still for the type of clinical impersonality such a method would carry. “I want to know.”

Solemnly, Katsuki Yuuri nods. Viktor realizes suddenly that they are precisely in the situation he has imagined furiously for months. He is lying on Katsuki Yuuri’s bed, and Yuuri’s head is tucked into the hollow of his throat. Their legs are tangled irrevocably with the sheets. “Of course,” Yuuri says softly. “Of course, Viktor. Whatever you think is best.”

* * *

 

Christophe Giacometti never left LA, after Viktor died. He works in journalism now, and his current address prescribes to the eastern edge of the downtown. The Artist District, which Viktor finds both damningly fitting and rather heartening.

Phichit Chulanont is flicking through his Instagram profile when Viktor bids him good morning. He settles on the armrest of the sofa and blinks.

“You found him.” The post which confirms such news is one of two hands wrapped around respective glasses of champagne, golden bands on the ring fingers. Viktor had forgotten Chris was engaged. Viktor had taken that photo himself.

“Not hard to find,” Phichit chimes, but he sounds proud of himself. “Just searched his name and looked for pictures of you.”

He scrolls too fast past innumerable photos of parties, bars, and poolsides. Settles on a photo from the year past, of Viktor Nikiforov and Christophe Giacometti draped across each other’s laps in a friend’s apartment. The lighting is poor, and the flash illuminates their eyes too brightly. Chris is laughing. Viktor is caught, memorialized, in a single moment of speaking.

“You look the same,” Phichit says, and there is a touch of solemnity to his tone. “In case--if you were ever worried. He’ll know you.”

Viktor’s hand drifts to his throat. There is something there in the photo, a smudge of Mila’s lipstick or a dark smear of one of her oil pastels. Perhaps a bruise. He bruised so tenderly, while alive. Such was a side effect of being so pale.

“Thank you,” he whispers, and Phichit nods. He shifts uncomfortably, as if the sincerity between them is awkward for him. Viktor supposes it is. He is sincere with Yuuri, but exchanges between him and Phichit hardly verge outside the realm of teasing. The last serious exchange they had shared was over Yuuri’s head, while they had been drinking, and even then Phichit had been stoned and they had not done any actual speaking.

Viktor supposes he should remedy that.

“Um. About Yuuri--”

“Yuuri can take care of himself,” Phichit says brusquely. He turns away, flicks through Chris’s Instagram profile with pointed carelessness. “I’m not his keeper.”

“Um--”

“If you think I’m going to get involved in whatever is between you and my best friend for the hell of it, Viktor, then you have a poor understanding of who I am.” Phichit looks at him fiercely. Then he doesn't. His expression softens. “He likes you. I like Yuuri to be happy. That’s all.”

“Oh.”

Phichit tilts his head mockingly. _“Oh.”_ He grins. “What did you expect? I can hardly threaten to throw you out. And I have no idea how to perform an exorcism.”

Softly, Viktor says, “I thought those were just for demons.”

“See? I have no fucking idea.” Phichit shrugs. “Could you be a demon?”

“Not as far as I know,” Viktor says.

“Mm. But you don't know very much, now do you?”

Fair point. “I suppose not.”

Phichit taps the side of his nose. “There you go.” He puts his phone down and sets about looking absorbed in homework. Without glancing at Viktor, he says, “Yuuri will be home soon. Don't look quite so sad when he does, yeah?”

Viktor sets about following this advice. Something hums perpetually within his chest, and the feeing is neither pleasant nor uncomfortable. It simply _is_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i told myself i was going to update this last week, but between updating my other fic and living my life, time got away from me. so here's part two, a week late! (sorry abt that.)
> 
> as always, thank you so much for comments and kudos! i appreciate them all very much.  
> xx


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